Kawachi, Kazuhiro

Scopus Paper Info  
Paper Count: 10 Citation Count: 41 h-index: 4

Click to view the Scopus page. The data was downloaded from Scopus API in July 19, 2026, via http://api.elsevier.com and http://www.scopus.com .

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Profile Summary 【 Display / hide 】

  • Some of my papers are available on the following websites:

    https://researchmap.jp/kazuhirokawachi/

    https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kazuhiro-Kawachi-2/research/

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Career 【 Display / hide 】

  • 1992.04
    -
    2000.02

    Keio Shiki Boys' Senior High School, Division of Foreign Languages, Full-time Teacher

  • 2008.10
    -
    2021.03

    National Defense Academy of Japan, Department of Foreign Languages, Assistant Professor: October 2008-September 2010, Associate Professor: October 2010-March 2017, Professor: April 2017-March 2021

  • 2021.04
    -
    Present

    Keio University, Faculty of Business and Commerce, Professor

  • 2026.04
    -
    2026.07

    University of Cologne, (“Prominence in Language” funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [DFG: German Research Foundation])Senior Fellow

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Academic Background 【 Display / hide 】

  • 1983.04
    -
    1986.03

    Keio Boys' Senior High School

    Graduated

  • 1986.04
    -
    1990.03

    Keio University, Faculty of Business and Commerce

    University, Graduated

  • 1990.04
    -
    1992.03

    Keio University, Faculty of Letters

    University, Graduated

  • 1996.07
    -
    1996.08

    University of California, Berkeley, Teaching English as a Foreign Language Summer Institute

    United States, Completed

  • 1997.08
    -
    2007.06

    State University of New York at Buffalo, Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science Ph.D. program

    United States, Graduate School, Completed, Doctoral course

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Academic Degrees 【 Display / hide 】

  • Ph.D. in Linguistics, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2007.06

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Licenses and Qualifications 【 Display / hide 】

  • Teaching certificate for English at senior high school, 1990.03

  • Teaching certificate for English at junior high school, 1992.03

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Research Areas 【 Display / hide 】

  • Humanities & Social Sciences / Linguistics

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Research Keywords 【 Display / hide 】

  • Linguistic typology

  • Cognitive linguistics

  • Semantics and pragmatics

  • Syntax and morphology

  • Psycholinguistics

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Books 【 Display / hide 】

  • Motion Event Descriptions across Languages

    Yo Matsumoto (ed.), De Gruyter Mouton, 2025.02

    Scope: Chapter 3: Kupsapiiny as a predominantly anti-verb-framed, non-head path-coding language.,  Contact page： 91-128 , Accepted

    　View Summary

    This chapter examines descriptions of motion events in the video clips for the NINJAL motion project by speakers of Kupsapiiny (Southern Nilotic; Uganda), and demonstrates that the typological pattern of this language, which has morphological path and deictic-directional satellites, can vary depending on the complexity of the construction used. In a single-verb construction, it most frequently exhibits the satellite-framed pattern. In a more complex monoclausal multi-verb construction, a different pattern is exhibited. Its dominant subtype is one where a manner-of-motion verb as a main verb precedes the non-tensed form of a path-of-motion verb or a deictic-directional verb, a type of nonhead-framed (head-external path-coding) construction, which is neither satellite-framed nor verb-framed. Thus, Kupsapiiny consistently avoids verb-framed constructions. Hence, Kupsapiiny’s system does not fit in any of the systems that Talmy (2000b) recognizes, including such minor systems as split, parallel, and intermixed systems. It can be characterized as predominantly anti-verb-framed, showing a nonhead (head-external) path-coding pattern that can emerge as the morphological satellite-framed construction, or alternatively, as the nonhead-framed, monoclausal multi-verb sub-construction as a pattern contrasting with the verb-framed pattern along a dimension different from that in Talmy’s dichotomy, where the satellite-framed pattern contrasts with the verb-framed pattern.

  • Motion Event Descriptions across Languages

    Yo Matsumoto (ed.), De Gruyter Mouton, 2025.02

    Scope: Chapter 4: Does the degree of integration of constructions iconically reflect motion event types? The case of Sidaama.,  Contact page： 129-166 , Accepted

    　View Summary

    According to Croft et al. (2010), more typical or natural situations are likely to be expressed with a more tightly integrated construction than those that are less so. The present chapter examines descriptions of NINJAL motion event video clips by speakers of Sidaama (Highland-East Cushitic; Ethiopia), and shows that as far as the Sidaama data is concerned, the typicality or naturalness of an event is not a factor in giving rise to the use of a syntactically more integrated construction in motion event descriptions, uncovering inconsistency with Croft et al.’s hypothesis. Specific problematic cases concern the highly unusual manners of motion in Sidaama culture, skipping and jumping once (from one place to another). For skipping, there is no lexical item that specifically describes this manner, and thus available lexical items that express similar manners are used instead; accordingly, the degree of the syntactic integration of the construction depends on the particular lexical item used for the manner. Motion events involving a figure’s arrival at a goal by jumping once are expressed with considerable frequency by means of a compact construction consisting of a manner verb and a goal noun phrase with a path marker because the property of ‘jumping once’ functions not only as the co-event of manner but also as the co-event of enablement or cause, as well as its short path, exhibiting iconicity in usage.

  • The Oxford Handbook of Ethiopian Languages.

    Ronny Meyer, Bedilu Wakjira, and Zelealem Leyew (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2023.04

    Scope: Chapter 17: Sidaama.,  Contact page： 320-343 , Accepted

    　View Summary

    This chapter provides a sketch of the grammar of Sidaama, a Highland East Cushitic language spoken in the Sidaama Zone of south-central Ethiopia. After giving very brief background information on this language, it outlines the phonological system, lexical and grammatical categories, the morphology of its verbs, nouns, and adjectives, and the structure of its single-verb, multi-verb, and complex-clause constructions. Phenomena of particular typological interest described in the grammatical category section, the morphology section, and the clause structure section include noun-phrase clitics, the modification and the MODIFICATION distinctions of nouns, and external possessor constructions, respectively. The chapter also overviews different types of speech reports as well as focus- and topic-marking strategies and cleft-construction formation as topics of pragmatics.

  • Associated Motion

    Antoine Guillaume and Harold Koch (eds.), De Gruyter Mouton, 2021.02

    Scope: Chapter 19: The ‘along’–deictic-directional verb suffix complex in Kupsapiny.,  Contact page： 747-777 , Accepted

    　View Summary

    The present study describes the use of a verb suffix complex consisting of the ‘along’ suffix and a deictic-directional suffix in Kupsapiny, a Southern Nilotic language of Uganda. In addition to specifying deictic direction of motion, this suffix complex can be used to emphasize the continuity or iteration of the translational motion expressed by a motion verb or to motionalize a non-motion verb to express associated motion (Koch 1984; Wilkins 1991; Guillaume 2013, 2016). It can also function as a pure aspectual marker, which involves no motion at all. There- fore, the use of this suffix complex always conveys the concept of continuation or iteration, and associated motion does not seem to be totally independent of the temporal category of aspect in Kupsapiny. Other typological implications of the findings are further discussed.

  • Broader Perspectives on Motion Event Descriptions

    Yo Matsumoto and Kazuhiro Kawachi (eds.), John Benjamins., 2020.08,  Page： 324

    , Accepted

    　View Summary

    Human languages exhibit fascinating commonalities and variations in the ways they describe motion events. In this volume, the contributors present their research results concerning motion event descriptions in the languages that they investigate. The volume features new proposals based on a broad range of data involving different kinds of motion events previously understudied, such as caused motion (e.g., kick a ball across) and even visual motion (e.g., look into a hole). Special attention is also paid to deixis, a hitherto neglected aspect of motion event descriptions. A wide range of languages is examined, including those spoken in Europe, Africa, and Asia. The results provide new insights into the patterns languages deploy to represent motion events. This volume will appeal to anyone interested in language universals and typology, as well as the relationship between language and thought.

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Papers 【 Display / hide 】

  • An investigation of Japanese causative constructions based on speakers’ acceptability ratings.

    Kazuhiro Kawachi

    Linguistics Vanguard: A Multimodal Journal for the Language Sciences (De Gruyter Brill)   2026

    Research paper (scientific journal), Single Work, Accepted

    　View Summary

    This paper examines the semantics and pragmatics of Japanese causatives based on Japanese speakers’ acceptability ratings of descriptions of video clips depicting causal events. It investigates whether speakers’ ratings of the following Japanese causative response types pattern like comparable constructions in other languages: (i) compact causatives (specifically, the underived transitive verb construction and the non-productive morphological causative construction), (ii) productive morphological causatives marked by -(s)ase, and (iii) the node ‘because’ adverbial clause construction. It also explores how different factors contributing to the directness of causation in causal events are iconically reflected in speakers’ preferences for these response types. To address these questions, cluster analysis, random forest and conditional inference tree analyses, and multidimensional scaling analysis were conducted. The major findings are as follows. First, the cluster analysis, conducted without reference to morphosyntactic information, shows that the three response types parallel three distinct clusters observed in other languages. Notably, (i) and (ii), which Shibatani (1973) argued are semantically and structurally different, exhibit different rating patterns. Second, speakers’ preferences for the three response types generally support the Iconicity Principle (the more direct, the more compact), although the dominant factors and their relative importance differ across the response types.

  • Sidaama speakers’ atypical acceptability judgments of causative constructions used to describe causal event video stimuli.

    Kazuhiro Kawachi

    Linguistics Vanguard: A Multimodal Journal for the Language Sciences (De Gruyter Brill)   2026

    Research paper (scientific journal), Accepted

    　View Summary

    This paper examines the acceptability ratings of causative constructions used to describe video clips depicting causal events by speakers of Sidaama (Cushitic; Ethiopia) and compares the results with data from speakers of other languages. It focuses on the following response types: compact causatives, the non-sentential causer-adjunct construction (‘Because of causer, resulting sub-event occurs’), the non-sentential cause-adjunct construction (‘Because of causing sub-event, resulting sub-event occurs’), the ‘by doing’ construction, the periphrastic causative construction with event nominalization (‘Resulting sub-event is caused by causing sub-event’), and the adverbial-clause construction. The data underwent cluster analysis, conditional inference tree analysis, random forest analysis, and multi-dimensional scaling.
    The Sidaama data exhibited patterns not found in other languages: relatively low ratings for compact causatives, the emergence of only two out of the three clusters of response types observed in other languages, causer type as an important variable influencing directness of causation for most constructions, and large inter-speaker variation. The study suggests that some of these may reflect Sidaama speakers’ preference for detailed descriptions that specify the causing sub-event. These findings are also compared with those from a related production study, and possible reasons for the observed differences are explored.

  • Ideophones in motion event descriptions in Kupsapiiny and Sidaama: Conceptualization of manners of motion as sounds and postures.

    Kazuhiro Kawachi

    Cognitive Semantics (Brill)  11 ( 2 ) 1 - 40 2025.10

    Research paper (scientific journal), Single Work, Accepted,  ISSN  2352-6416

    　View Summary

    This paper examines the use of ideophones in motion event descriptions in Kupsapiiny (Southern Nilotic; Uganda; anti-verb-framed with path-affix satellites) and Sidaama (Highland East Cushitic; Ethiopia; verb-framed). Both languages lack verbs for expressive manners of motion, but Kupsapiiny has a much richer inventory of expressive ideophones that can be used to describe motion events than Sidaama. This contradicts Schaefer’s (2001) hypotheses that ideophones are largely restricted to verb-framed languages and that they primarily depict expressive manners of motion, which are absent from these languages’ lexical inventories. Although ideophones might seem irrelevant to Talmy’s (2000) motion typology, a closer examination reveals that while both languages lack direct means of expressing detailed manners through verbs, adverbs, or ideophones, Kupsapiiny distinguishes various sounds using ideophones, only some of which are loosely associated with specific motions, whereas Sidaama often conceptualizes unusual manners as postures, with ideophones only occasionally used to describe posture changes.

  • Long default and short indefinite noun forms in Kupsapiiny: Synchronic usage and diachronic development.

    Kazuhiro Kawachi

    Gengo Kenkyu: Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan (Linguistic Society of Japan)  163   79 - 110 2023.01

    Research paper (scientific journal), Accepted,  ISSN  0024-3914

    　View Summary

    In Kupsapiiny, a Southern Nilotic language of Uganda, nearly all common nouns in the singular or the plural have two forms depending on the presence vs. absence of a suffix. This study examines how long and short common noun forms (with and without the suffix, respectively) occur in discourse by means of Dryer’s (2014) Reference Hierarchy. It shows that short forms are only infrequently used for indefinites, with their mandatory use restricted to two types of indefinites, semantically nonspecific indefinites involving negation and true-predicate nominals, whereas long forms serve as frequently used, default forms, which occur not only in definite situations, but also – in fact, more commonly than short forms – in most indefinite situations. The present study hypothesizes that long forms have semantically generalized from forms marking definiteness, i.e., the speaker’s assumption about the identifiability or accessibility of the referent to the hearer (Givón 1995, 2001), to those indicating the speaker’s assumption about the accessibility of the referent (type) to the hearer (or sometimes the speaker themself) with the result that their context extended from definite situations to include most indefinite situations, as reported about the diachronic development of definite articles in other languages (e.g., Greenberg 1978). It speculates that the context extension for long forms was brought about by associations between referents in discourse based on the Gricean maxim of relation as well as subjectification. Other types of factors than the speaker’s assumption about the referent (type) accessibility and indefiniteness in the choice between long and short forms (lexical, constructional, contextual, and generational differences as well as special uses of short forms for definites) are also described. This study also points out that the Kupsapiiny noun system as a whole contradicts the grammatical form–frequency correspondence hypothesis (Haspelmath 2021).

  • Directness of causation and morphosyntactic complexity of constructions: Japanese and Korean cases.

    Kazuhiro Kawachi, Sang-Hee Park, and Erika Bellingham

    Japanese/Korean Linguistics (Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications)  26   225 - 236 2020.07

    Research paper (scientific journal), Joint Work, Accepted

    　View Summary

    This study examines how the constructional choices Japanese and Korean speakers make in describing causal events iconically reflect the directness of causation in the event. We use experimental production data to explore multiple possible factors that could contribute to the perceived directness of causation for a given event. In both the Japanese and Korean data, we find multiple factors of directness of causation reflected iconically through the use of constructions with varying degrees of morphosyntactic compactness, in harmony with the Iconicity Principle (Haiman 1983, 1985). The Japanese and the Korean data exhibit many properties in common, despite their different inventories of constructions.

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Papers, etc., Registered in KOARA 【 Display / hide 】

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Reviews, Commentaries, etc. 【 Display / hide 】

  • Typology of motion expressions

    Kazuhiro Kawachi

    『論点・言語学』 (京都：ミネルヴァ書房)   2026

    Article, review, commentary, editorial, etc. (scientific journal)

  • Kupsapiiny

    河内一博

    『図説 世界の言語：危機言語と言語の多様性』 (東京：朝倉書店)   2026

    Article, review, commentary, editorial, etc. (other), Lead author

  • So-called gender markers as classifying nominalizers in Swedish.

    Tatjana Ilic and Kazuhiro Kawachi

    Journal of Foreign Language Education, Special Issue 1: Classifying nominalization in cross-linguistic perspective I    209 - 232 2026

  • Classifying nominalization in cross-linguistic perspective: Introduction to special issue I.

    Kazuhiro Kawachi, Prashant Pardeshi, Yu Li, and Maho Naito

    Journal of Foreign Language Education, Special Issue 1: Classifying nominalization in cross-linguistic perspective I    1 - 19 2026

  • Gender marking on grammatical nominalizations in Sidaama.

    Kazuhiro Kawachi

    Journal of Foreign Language Education, Special Issue 1: Classifying nominalization in cross-linguistic perspective I    293 - 335 2026

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Presentations 【 Display / hide 】

  • Reducing agent prominence in Southern Nilotic impersonal constructions.

    Elisabeth Clages, Alice Mitchell, and Kazuhiro Kawachi

    CRC Day ‘Prominence in Language’, Seminargebäude, University of Cologne, 

    2026.07

  • Functional nature of deictic verbs: Crosslinguistic experimental evidence from call-induced motion events.

    Yo Matsumoto, Kiyoko Eguchi, Monica Kahumburu, Kazuhiro Kawachi, Hiroaki Koga, Miyuki Kojima, Miho Mano, Takahiro Morita, Yuko Morokuma, Yui Suzuki, Kiyoko Takahashi, Kyosuke Yamamoto, and Yuko Yoshinari

    [International presentation]  16th International Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology, University Lyon 2 (online presentation), 

    2026.07
    , 

    Oral presentation (general)

  • Classifying nominalizers across languages: Testing Shibatani’s implicational hierarchy.

    Kazuhiro Kawachi, Prashant Pardeshi, Yu Li, Maho Naito, Tatjana Ilic, Andrej Bekeš, Gitanjali Bez, Tetsuya Miyagishi, Govind Mopkar, Trang Phan, Satoko Shirai, Niranjan Uppoor, and Fang Wu

    [International presentation]  16th International Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology, University Lyon 2, 

    2026.07
    , 

    Oral presentation (general)

  • Morphologically marked impersonality and perspective shift: The Kupsapiiny impersonal construction.

    Kazuhiro Kawachi and Alice Mitchell

    Paper presented online at the 172nd meeting of the Linguistic Society of Japan, Oberlin University, June 28, 2027., 

    2026.06

  • Morphologically marked impersonality in Southern Nilotic as a grammaticalized operation reducing attentional and identificational agent prominence: The case of Kupsapiiny.

    Kazuhiro Kawachi

    Linguistics Colloquium, Department of Linguistics, University of Cologne, 

    2026.06

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Research Projects of Competitive Funds, etc. 【 Display / hide 】

  • Studies on space, person, and time deixis based on East Africa languages data

    2022.06
    -
    2025.03

    MEXT, JSPS, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Kazuhiro Kawachi, Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory), Principal investigator

  • Crosslinguistic studies on grammatical nominalizations

    2022.04
    -
    2027.03

    MEXT, JSPS, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Kazuhiro Kawachi, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), Principal investigator

  • A cross-linguistic study of motion event and state-change event descriptions

    2019.04
    -
    2023.03

    MEXT, JSPS, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Yo Matsumoto, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), Coinvestigator(s)

  • Iconicity in language use: A cross-linguistic study of constructions used to describe causal events

    2019.04
    -
    2022.03

    MEXT,JSPS, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C), Principal investigator

  • Causality across Languages

    2015.08
    -
    2023.01

    National Science Foundation, Jürgen Bohnemeyer, Research grant, Other

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Works 【 Display / hide 】

  • Fieldwork in Micronesian regions

    2025.08
    -
    Present

  • Fieldwork in the Sebei Region, Uganda

    2009.07
    -
    Present

  • Fieldwork in the Sidaama National Regional State, Ethiopia

    2008.03
    -
    Present

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Awards 【 Display / hide 】

  • 山崎奨励賞

    2014.03

    Type of Award： Award from publisher, newspaper, foundation, etc.

  • Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States Presidents' Prize for 2009

    2009.08

    Type of Award： Award from international society, conference, symposium, etc.

  • College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Fellowship, 2005-2006

    2005.08

    Type of Award： Other

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Other 【 Display / hide 】

  • 2026年

    　View Details

    Senior Fellow, Collaborative Research Centre (CRC 1252) "Prominence in Language," Universität zu Köln, Germany (April-July 2026)

  • 2025年

    　View Details

    Visiting researcher, DDL - Dynamique Du Langage, CNRS and Université Lumière Lyon 2, France (June 2025)

  • 2025年

    　View Details

    Visiting researcher, LLACAN - Langage, langues et cultures d'Afrique, CNRS, France (April-May 2025)

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Courses Taught 【 Display / hide 】

  • PRACTICAL ENGLISH SEMINAR 2

    2024

  • PRACTICAL ENGLISH SEMINAR 1

    2024

  • GENERAL EDUCATION SEMINAR (DB)

    2024

  • GENERAL EDUCATION SEMINAR (DA)

    2024

  • ENGLISH READING 1B(UPPER INTERMEDIATE)

    2024

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Courses Previously Taught 【 Display / hide 】

  • Japanese Linguistics

    Tokyo University of Foreign Studies

    2019.10
    -
    2022.03
    , 

    Autumn Semester, Undergraduate (specialized), Lecture, Outside own faculty (within Keio)

  • Topics in Linguistics

    Tokyo University of Foreign Studies

    2019.04
    -
    2022.07
    , 

    Spring Semester, Undergraduate (specialized), Lecture, Outside own faculty (within Keio)

  • Language and Communication/Introduction to Linguistics

    Tokyo University of Foreign Studies

    2017.04
    -
    2018.03
    , 

    Spring Semester, Undergraduate (specialized), Lecture, Outside own faculty (within Keio)

  • Introduction to linguistics

    Tokyo University of Foreign Studies

    2016.04
    -
    2016.07
    , 

    Spring Semester, Undergraduate (specialized), Lecture, Outside own faculty (within Keio)

  • Introduction to Morpho-syntactic and Semantic Typology (winter intensive course)

    Tokyo University of Foreign Studies

    2016.02
    -
    2022.03
    , 

    Other, Undergraduate (specialized), Outside own faculty (within Keio)

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Social Activities 【 Display / hide 】

  • Joint researcher at NINJAL

    2010.08
    -
    Present

  • Joint researcher at Osaka University

    2009.10
    -
    2012.03

  • Joint researcher at ILCAA

    2008.07
    -
    2024.03
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Academic Activities 【 Display / hide 】

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Memberships in Academic Societies 【 Display / hide 】

  • 日本認知言語学会, 

    2007.09
    -
    Present

  • 日本言語学会, 

    2007.10
    -
    Present

  • 日本英語学会, 

    2010.05
    -
    2024.09

  • Association for Linguistic Typology, 

    2010.10
    -
    Present

  • 日本アフリカ学会, 

    2016.01
    -
    Present
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Committee Experiences 【 Display / hide 】

  • 2016.04
    -
    2018.03

    科学研究費委員会専門委員（英語学）, 日本学術振興会

  • 2015.04
    -
    2024.03

    評議員 , 日本言語学会

  • 2014.05
    -
    2015.08

    大会運営委員, World Congress of African Linguistics

  • 2012.07
    -
    2015.06

    大会運営委員, 日本言語学会

  • 2011.11

    発表賞審査員2012年11月, 2014年06月, 2014年11月, 2018年06月, 2019年11月, 日本言語学会

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